It was strange, waking up. It hadn't been something that Grantaire had been waiting for or expecting, to say the least. The last things he could remember were the screams, the cries, the sounds of the rifle's rapid fire as they were triggered one by one by one, things falling to the floor and breaking. Actually, that was a lie. The last thing that Grantaire could remember was silence. The dead of silence in the cafe as he woke from a drunken stupor and realised, he knew, he understood. That everything was over. For a brief minute, second, year, Grantaire had that soaring hope that maybe that had all been a complete dream, that he would wake up from passing out on the floor in the middle of the cafe to everyone around him chuckling and laughing at him, calling him a complete idiot as they usually did.
But as much as he might have hoped that had been the case, he knew that it wasn't so. He remembered the bodies of his comrades, boys who weren't quite men who he had come to regard as his friends, laying scattered on the floor around the soldiers that had stormed and destroyed their barricade. He remembered pushing through them and stopping them killing his best friend. He remembered the darkness and the resounding silence that had been the thing to wake him, not the sounds of his friends dying. It sickened him to know that it had to be that, silence, to wake him, other than the sounds of the few people he actually cared about in this sick world dying.
He laughed, a harsh sound, ravaged by the years of alcoholism and drinking that had been steadily destroying his insides, a sound that echoed through the emptiness of whatever place he happened to be in now. It was funny, absolutely hilarious, wasn't it? The fact that he had been the one to give the people around him mockeries, give them high lectures on how they were being completely idiotic and trying to change the world too fast, and who would remember them all when they fell? He had been firmly cynical of the entire idea, told himself that he would never get himself mixed up with that sort of idiocy, and the ironic thing was that he had. He had done exactly what they had done and died for a cause that wouldn't even change part of the world in the small period of time that they were in. Grantaire hated that he knew more about the cruelties of the world than the whole group put together, but it was also something he prided himself on, more than he prided himself on anything else. It had been the thing to drive him into the depths of the alcohol that rarely gave his mind some separation from the horrors of the world, but it had also gave him the arguments to back himself up when he was telling them all how stupid they were being, what they were risking – their lives – for a cause that would come to... what?
"Nothing, that's what it will come to," he called out hoarsely, into the silence that surrounded him in a soft blanket, talking as if everyone were still alive and they were in one of their regular cafe meetings, with him being drunk somewhere around the back area and having Enjolras glaring at him from his place in the top spot. It was a scene that Grantaire wanted to be familiar with again, but with the cold bliss that enveloped him since he woke up being too painfully present, he knew that those scenes would never happen again, not in this day and age, and certainly not carried out by them, the students of Le Amis d'ABC. It was a sad thing to dwell on and with no alcohol apparent to stop him from doing so, Grantaire began to walk.
He didn't know where he was going, except he just descended the stairs and outside the cafe to... well, it was just the familiar streets of Paris. Except they were empty, devoid of any soul that walked around like he did. He felt something wrench at his heart; what if this was Hell, for him? What if he was condemned to being alone forever, without anyone he truly cared for by his side? Even though he had ridiculed them and dismissed the other students, they had, at the end of the day, been his friends. And one of Grantaire's greatest fears was being alone. That was why he surrounded himself with the others, that was why he was proud to call them his friends, because even if he wasn't capable of living, believing, or dying, as he had been frequently told, he was capable of being there with them. And even though they hadn't believed it, although Grantaire couldn't give two hoots about believing in the revolution, he had been capable of one thing.
"Grantaire," he called. "Go and sleep your wine off somewhere else. This is a place for intoxication, but not for drunkenness. Don't dishonour the barricade."
"You know I believe in you."
"Grantaire, you're incapable of believing or thinking or willing or living or dying."
"You'll see," said Grantaire gravely. "You'll see."
Fury took him then, a flame of fury that sparked and then flared, and it was that anger that caused him to shout out, loudly and angrily, into the emptiness that he so hated. "I showed them, didn't I, Apollo! I showed them that I believed! I showed them that I thought! I showed them that I had the will to do it! I showed them I could live! I showed them that I could die, didn't I Apollo!? I proved YOU wrong! I showed you that I believed! I showed you that I believe in you! I still do! Why could you not see that?!"
It was a sound behind him that made him whirl around. It wasn't a threatening sound, nor a pitiful sound of a child. It wasn't even a whimper. It was a choking sound, one that sounded like someone getting their throat caught on talking with tears. And who was it going to be but Enjolras, standing there in the usual tidiness of the Paris streets when the stone wasn't stained by the blood of young, angry men? Of course it was going to be that perfect man that Grantaire saw as Apollo.
"So you heard all of that, did you?" he said bitterly, his dark eyes filled with years of horror and scenes that no man should ever have to see boring into the sharp blue ones of the pale face of Enjolras. "Go ahead. Laugh at me. Tell me I'm stupid."
He instead received a question that he hadn't been expecting. "Why did you do it, Grantaire?"
A million answers travelled through his head at once. The revolution, because he was fed up of the world, because he had nothing left to lose, because he wasn't going to let Enjolras die such a lonely and stupid and pointless death, because it was Enjolras, because Enjolras was the one man he really cared about int he world and he wasn't prepared to let him go so easily –
"Revolution?"
And that was when he was tackled to the floor.
So, hi. I'm back, with another Les Miserables fanfiction. I actually intend for this to be multi-chaptered, not ridiculously long but at least four or five chapters provided I keep myself writing and this gets a good reception. It'd be nice if you guys would review, whether it be on the idea, the writing style, the writing itself, etcetera! Thanks for reading, if you have, and hopefully I'll see you guys in the next chapter!
-Hanny